MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1996
Consider it progress if the Memphis Pharaohs sail through the first 10 seconds of tonight’s Arena Football League exhibition against the Florida Bobcats at The Pyramid. Last season on the Pharaohs’ first play, San Jose Sabercats kicker Jim Crouch bounced his kickoff off the end zone rebound net iron support. The Sabercats’ Marlin Brown returned the kick for a 4yard touchdown. ”We won the (pregame) coin toss, so fundamentally you want to defer your option until the second half,” Pharaohs coach Don Frease said. ”But being our first game, I wanted to be aggressive, I wanted to have fun, so I said, ‘Let’s take the ball.’ Bata boom, bata bing, it’s a TD for them. I thought, ‘Well, they said it would be wild.’ ” It was and Frease learned much during the Pharaohs’ 6-7 season. He discovered he needed bigger linemen, better fullback-linebackers and more durable receivers.
50 years ago — 1971
Three organizations called Monday for a state income tax in Tennessee as the House-senate Finance Committee began hearings on Gov. Winfield Dunn’s $95 million tax increase package. The League of Women Voters, the Tennessee Education Association and the Tennessee Committee for Tax Reform all presented testimony in favor of an income tax — as opposed to Dunn’s proposal to increase the state sales tax.
75 years ago — 1946
Better understanding between the United States and other republics in the Western Hemisphere will be discussed by Pierre Villere at the Pan American luncheon at 1 p.m. today at The Peabody. Mr. Villere is publicity director of International House in New Orleans. Caffey Robertson, president of Memphis International Center, will preside at the meeting, which is sponsored by the Center and Liga Pan Americana.
100 years ago — 1921
When Judge Laughlin in Division 4 of the Circuit Court held that the evidence against the city in the four bad water suits on trial before him showed no negligence on the part of the city, the cases went out of court by the route of a directed verdict, as he, with the concurrence of Judges Capell and Pittman, had held on the previous day that the city was not a warrant or of the quality of the water supplied by it to consumers. It was a complete and clean victory of Walter P. Armstrong, city attorney.